Pointe of Art

What is the Point of Art? 11/03
by Robert Maniscalco

I've got a lot of gall. I admit it. When I am asked to juror an exhibition, teach, demonstrate or talk to a group of artists or host a TV show I do not shy away. I see it as another opportunity to spread the word about the transformative power of the arts in our society, our community. I
try not to question why I do it anymore. It's important, so I do it. So do a lot of us.

Recently, however, I was confronted by a fellow artist who wanted to know what I hoped to accomplish with all this "educating" I'm doing. "After all," he pointed out, "didn't you start out as an artist?" He went on to explain that the job of an artist is "to express a point of view, to satisfy an inner muse, not to educate the public about the value of arts in our lives." Naturally, this got me thinking, a very dangerous pastime indeed.

He was right. This whole thing started from a love of being inside the creative process. I truly love to express myself. I love ideas. I love to invent. I love the contradictions which inhabit the making and appreciation of great art. After all, it's just me and my materials. I love to throw myself into an invented structure and fly away into the supreme ecstasy of the moment. Who wouldn't?

So why am I doing all this other stuff? When do I get time for me? What art have I done for me lately? I'm so busy writing this column, hosting TV shows, running a gallery, directing plays, administering programs, when do I have time to be an artist? People have even asked me, "when do you find time for a life," as if to say, "get a life."

Ouch!

It's true. Sometimes I get so wound up with all the stuff I'm doing and so caught up in all the questions about why I'm doing it that my head starts to spin.

Then I get to thinking, what if this whole bit I'm doing IS the art? What if my whole life is a work of art? I've always thought of art as a metaphor for life. But what if the opposite is also true? What if life is a metaphor for art? In other words, what if my entire life were one giant
work of art - in progress?

Hmm . . . let's see . . . what did I create today? Here's my list: wake up, make coffee (very dark), eat breakfast, blow the leaves into the street, go to the gallery where Jim Pallas is giving his artist talk/walk through, visit with my family, talk on the phone, answer emails, write this article, make a piece for the Actual Size exhibit, go home, play with Vinnie (my dog), cuddle with Amanda (my wife), feel our baby kick, go to sleep. Brilliant!

Everything I know about life I've learned as an artist. Art is not something I do for a living; it is what I am. It is my access to the present and to eternity and to the spiritually unknowable. I can't imagine doing anything else.

And I'm not alone in this passion. Others too, feel their creative life IS their life. And their lives are powerfully lived because they know who they are and what they are doing. Together, we are the creative community and we are the key to a healthy society.

That's why I talk so much about the need for arts. It's a pretty great life. And I live for the day when more people can find a way to express their humanity instead of negating one another with hatred and wars and the black and white insanity that comes from a life without art.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying the arts actually contain all the answers to the world's dilemmas. Rather, it is the myriad of questions asked by the artist which bring us ever closer to the truth. But never close enough to touch it. For instance, how is it possible that an artist
can transmit the joy or pain of his/her life through the manipulating of common objects and materials available to everyone? What is it about listening to a Beethoven Symphony that makes being alive somehow make sense?

We'd have to ask a lot more questions to get to the "Pointe of Art." The artist is someone who recognizes an amazing thing when it happens and has just enough skill and courage to create the circumstances where the expression of something true can be allowed to happen. Being an artist is to walk the thin line between order and chaos. The artist must learn to know when to take control and when to give it up. These art lessons, and so many more, are also a requisite for a balanced, fully realized life.

That's why I can't shut up about the arts. That's why I do what I do. Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got some art to make.

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